Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Exhibitions

A Critical View: The Artist We Love To Hate

The Tate Modern’s exhibition of Damien Hirst’s work opened last week, and I thought I was time to check in on the reaction. It is, the Tate says:

the first substantial survey of his work in a British institution and will bring together key works from over twenty years. The exhibition will include iconic sculptures from his Natural History series, including The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living 1991, in which he suspended a shark in formaldehyde. Also included will be vitrines such as A Thousand Years from 1990, medicine cabinets, pill cabinets and instrument cabinets in addition to seminal paintings made throughout his career using butterflies and flies as well as spots and spins. The two-part installation In and Out of Love, not shown in its entirety since its creation in 1991 and Pharmacy 1992 will be among the highlights of the exhibition.

The Tate advises, on its website, “We are currently experiencing a very high demand for tickets. We strongly advise booking in advance to avoid disappointment.”

When I looked for reviews, I discovered that my friend Helen Stoilas at The Art Newspaper had already compiled some quotes from the reviews, published on the web — “Thumbs down (bar one) for Damien Hirst at Tate Modern.”  That one, I guess, is Richard Dorment at the “conservative” Daily Telegraph, who is quoted saying:

“For reasons that I don’t understand, he insists on presenting himself as a fraud who is somehow pulling the wool over the eyes of the public. And that’s a pity, because in Tate Modern’s full-scale retrospective he comes across as a serious—if wildly uneven—artist.” Dorment ends his review saying: “In many ways this is a difficult show, but I left it with a sense of Hirst as an artist whose moral stature can no longer be questioned.”

Less kind were critics at the Guardian, the Financial Times, the Times, and independent critic (former director of Kelvingrove in Glasgow) Julian Spalding, whose new book, Con Art–Why you ought to sell your Damien Hirsts while you can, apparently disqualified him, in the Tate’s view, from attending the press preview to do interviews for the BBC. Shame on the Tate Modern, if that’s the whole story. Here’s an account in the Independent, hat-tip to TAN.

To TAN’s roundup article, let me add a few:

Presumably, the Tate has its man and is sticking with him, charging £14.00 for adults,  and warning visitors to expect an hour of wait time before buying tickets. The exhibit was, btw, sponsored by the Qatar Museums Authority

Photo Credit: Hirst and his “I am Become Death, Shatterer of Worlds,” Oli Scarff/Getty Images via The Art Newspaper

 

 

The Once-A-Decade World’s Fair Of Flowers

Time for spring break, and with yesterday being Easter, it’s the perfect moment to think about flowers. I do every spring, but this year is special because I wrote about a once-a-decade event, the Floriade, which takes place in the Netherlands. It began in 1960, then took place in 1972, and has happened every ten years since. It’s gigantic exhibition of flowers, and as I wrote in an article that’s printed in today’s Newsweek International (and posted on the Newsweek-Daily Beast website in the U.S.):

..it’s not just about tulips, the country’s symbol. “It’s everything,” says Debbie Van Bourgondien, who calls herself “the Bulb Lady” (that’s trademarked) and who with her family owns Dutchbulbs.com in Virginia Beach, Va. She has gone to the last three Floriades. “If you are looking for the latest trends in gardening, the latest varieties, you’ll find it there,” she says. This year, there are 1.8 million bulb plants, 190,000 perennials, 18,000 shrubs, 15,000 hedges, 5,000 roses, and 3,000 newly planted trees of 250 species, plus fruits and vegetables. At the last Floriade, held in 2002 about 10 miles from Amsterdam at Haarlemmermeer, Van Bourgondien recalls being charmed by all the new miniatures on display. “I now have pots of miniature hostas around my patio,” she says.

I won’t go on, because most RCA readers come to my blog to read about the arts, not flowers. But public gardens — and the Floriade — are grappling with many of the same problems that dog museums: aging audiences and the need to widen their appeal. The Floriade did that this year, but not exactly in ways I’d recommend to most art museums.

 Photo Credits: Courtesy of CBS News (top) and The Telegraph (bottom)

 

The Art of the Enlightenment Ends In Beijing, With A Whimper?

On Saturday, The Art of the Enlightenment exhibition closed in Beijing. How did it do?

Organized by by the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, and the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen München Collections, along with the National Museum of China, where it has been on view for a yeaer, the exhibition featured “artworks in which the central ideas of the Enlightenment are visible, their influence on the visual arts, and the impact they have had on the artistic revolutions of the 18th century until the present.” It covered all the art, from painting and sculptures to graphics and craft, fashion and scientific instruments. Among the artists represented were  Friedrich, Gainsborough (his Marsham Children is below), Goya, Greuze, Hogarth, Houdon, Kauffmann, Piranesi, Raeburn, and Watteau.

It was hailed as an event, a show that would reveal to the Chinese the cultural values of the Enlightenment. That role took on added weight, and baggage, when the Chinese imprisoned artist Ai Weiwei last year. Some people, if I recall correctly, even suggested pulling the show from the Chinese museum.

So I was more than curious to check out the attendance, which the German museums on Mar. 23 said had exceeded 450,000 — not bad, except that that was over an entire year. The Germans nonetheless pretty much declared it a success; Michael Eissenhauer, Director General of the Berlin museum, said in a statement, “I am particularly pleased about the positive reactions from visitors who have been fascinated by and have thought intensively about the works.”

There are no Beijing museums on The Art Newspaper’s just-published Exhibition and Museum attendance list. But the Shanghai Museum is there, and it offers a comparison. Nearly 611,300 people attended a Maori treasures show that ran from July 21 to Nov. 6, about three months.  More than 349,000 visited a show called Alexandre Perrier: Mountains and Lakes that ran from Sept. 21 to Nov. 27, about two months.

Cornelia Pieper, Germany’s Minister of State in the Foreign Office, and Zhao Shaohua, Deputy Minister of Culture for the People’s Republic of China, marked the official conclusion of the exhibition in a ceremony on Mar. 25 that also began the last in a series of five dialogues on the topic.

Meantime, I checked China Daily, the state English-language newspaper, for coverage — but found none, at least in the U.S. edition.  The last mention I could find was in late February, when a story headlined “Ties Bind China and Germany” talked about a year of cultural exchange and mentioned the show in passing.

All in all, I’d therefore guess that some Chinese people in Beijing stayed away from the Enlightenment show, perhaps for political reasons. But here’s the good news: the exhibition website provides much information about the Enlightenment, in English, German and Mandarin, and there’s no telling how many people visited that.

 Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

 

 

 

How Yves Saint Laurent Got To Travel To Denver

Exhibitions happen in all sorts of ways, even quite by accident. Surprisingly, that’s how the big spring show — a restrospective of the works of Yves Saint Laurent — at the Denver Art Museum came about.

The exhibition, which begins on Mar. 25, will display more than 200 haute couture outfits by Saint Laurent, drawn from his 40-year careers. Curated by Florence Müller, with the cooperation of the Fondation Pierre Bergè-Yves Saint Laurent, it was first shown at the Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, in 2010. In the city of light on a visit, Christophe Heinrich, DAM’s director, decided to have a look-see. Eying the long line, he tried to use his director’s pass to avoid the wait. Petit Palais officials refused him, and sent him to the back. Though there was a two-and-a-half hour wait, Heinrich pulled out his smart phone, handled his emails and remained patient.

As he told me on a recent visit to New York, he loved the show, and decided to inquire about bringing it to Denver. At the time, the organizers had no plans to travel it to the U.S. When Heinrich asked, they offered to send a smaller version. He perservered.  Long negotiations about content (he wanted everything; the organizers didn’t want to send all of it) and cost ensued. In the end, the DAM got the whole show — for how much, I do not know.

I am not always big on fashion exhibitions, but Saint Laurent passes muster, in my book. In the course of his career, he made  made gorgeous and innovative creations that have given the exhibition shape.  One section, for example, deals with the freedom he brought to women’s clothing, while another explores his “1971 Scandal Collection,” inspired by the 1940s and a France under occupation. There will be his Mondrian dresses, his smoking jacket collection, his evening gowns from their glory days, and more. Details are here.

DAM is issuing timed-tickets, at $22 for general adult admission (which is normally $10 for Colorado residents and $13 for others) for this exhibit. It’s already had publicity, with the Denver Post calling it “the biggest fashion show to hit Denver — perhaps ever,” in this Mar. 9 article in the Denver Post.

It’s important for museums like Denver, where not a lot of tourists go to see art, to keep up momentum, to get people excited and try to make visiting the museum a habit. Last year, Marvelous Mud/Summer of Clay drew a lot of visitors. Now YSL and for the fall, the DAM is organizing Becoming van Gogh.  All three are exclusive to Denver, which — while not always my choice — helps that museum.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Denver Art Museum

Collectors, Lending Their Paintings To The MFA, Set A Welcome Standard — If Only

This Saturday, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston will open an exhibition that is, at least in one way, a model — because of the lenders’ behavior. It involves Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo, about whom I have written a couple of times, most extensively in a 2009 article in The Art Newspaper.

Now, fresh back from a four-museum international tour that included about 60 of their stellar Dutch Golden Age paintings, 40 of the works will be shown at the MFA — and this is the key part — integrated with the MFA’s 17th century Dutch and Flemish paintings collection.

The exhibition is called Complementary Collections, Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo and the MFA. The point of course is to allow comparisons and contrasts that will deepen visitors’ understanding of the work of these artists, including Rembrandt, Dou and Jacob van Ruisdael. In other instances, the van Otterloos will be lending works by artists, such as Aelbert Cuyp and Hendrick Avercamp, who are not represented at all in the MFA’s collection.

In the press release, not yet posted online, the MFA qualified that last phrase with “yet.” That’s an example of hopeful thinking, since the van Otterloos have not said where they will give their collection, though they have said they do intend to give it. As I have written before, it’s the MFA’s to lose. This is an excellent moment for the MFA to show how it would care for the pictures.

From where I sit, the van Otterloos have been excellent collectors not only for the careful and scholarly way they went about amassing their art, but also because they always seem to care more about the art than about themselves.

A short time ago, in an exchange on Facebook, members of an art group to which I belong were going over the case of the Linsky collection at the Metropolitan Museum.* According to the terms of the 1982 gift by Belle Linsky, the 380 objects she donated must always be segregated in galleries of their own, where they still remain. As a result, for example, the Met cannot hang two panels from the same altarpiece, acquired separately, near the piece given by the Linskys. That’s just one example of how such bequests mess up museums and art history. There are other examples at other museums (yes, I know, there’s also the Lehman wing at the Met). 

The van Otterloos don’t do that, thankfully. As a result, visitors to the MFA will see, for example, the museum’s Old Woman Cutting Bread (top) by Gerrit Dou right near the couple’s Self Portrait by Dou (1655 and 1665, respectively). They won’t have to chase from one to the other somewhere else in the museum, trying to remember as much as they can about the painting they just left. I, for one, am grateful.

The exhibition remains on view at the MFA until June 24.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

*I consult to a foundation that supports the Met